Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

Health Care Reform

Mr. BARTLETT. Madam Speaker, I believe that we can all agree the health care reform proposals ignited debates in homes and workplaces all over the country. The intense interest in health care policy by so many Americans made this August district work period unusually exciting. My offices were busy taking phone calls, e-mails, and having people drop by voicing their concerns. This healthy health care debate has led many Americans to become involved in politics for the first time.

Whenever we in Congress do something really important, we need to get outside the Beltway because that's where the great wisdom in our country lies. All of us in the Congress share three goals for health care reform legislation: We want to make health care insurance more affordable and accessible. We want to improve the quality of health care. We want to reduce the cost of health care. Where we disagree is how to accomplish these goals.

I would like to share some of what I did and learned concerning health care over the recess period. As a scientist and engineer, I seek out the facts to guide my decisions. I also earned my master's and doctorate degrees in human physiology, the basic medical science.

This training led me to a 20-year career teaching anatomy and physiology to both medical and nursing students. That's why one of the things I did and that my staff did was to read the House leadership bill, H.R. 3200, and the amendments by three House committees.

I'm very proud that so many of my constituents were also interested in learning what proposed health care reform bills would do and exactly what they say. That's why I posted on my Web site the House Majority Bill 3200 with information about the approved amendments.

I also posted on my Web site an alternative bill that I support, H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act, developed out of suggestions by my colleagues in the Republican Study Committee. For those constituents without computer access, I provided hard copies of these bills to eight libraries and my four district offices.

Besides reading legislation, I also engaged in a lot of listening and dialogue. I visited with local doctors in my district to get their perspective about health care.

At the recommendation of one of my constituents, Dr. John Vitarello, who is a cardiologist who practices at Frederick Memorial Hospital in my district, I toured the cardiac catherization ``cath'' labs at Washington Adventist Hospital on August 27. I was invited to tour the lab by Dr. Mark Turco, an interventional cardiologist. Dr. Turco is also a leader of the three-member physician team from Washington Adventist Hospital which volunteered to supervise and assist a joint training venture for physicians in Frederick Memorial Hospital so they could also perform innovative procedures in cath labs that shorten patients' recoveries and hospital stays compared to traditional surgical repairs.

While I was there in scrubs and mask, I observed a procedure called an endograft. An endograft is an innovative procedure in this case used to repair an aneurysm in the patient's aorta.

In the image-guided endovascular repair, a stent graft, a woven polyester tube with a metallic skeleton, was compressed inside a carrier catheter. While viewed on an x-ray monitor, the endograft was inserted through a small incision in the patient's groin and threaded through the catheter through arteries to the site of the aneurysm. The stent graft was then placed across the aneurysm and released. As the stent graft expanded, it gripped the normal arterial wall on both ends of the aneurysm, bypassing the bulge from the inside.

As I observed this procedure, I marveled at both the advances of our medical research and technology as well as the dedication in caring for human lives represented by this joint venture between Frederick Memorial Hospital and Washington Adventist Hospital. This procedure cuts down the recovery time for patients as well as the time required for patients to be in the hospital.

One of my greatest concerns about health care reform is that we don't curtail the innovations in health care that are invented predominantly here in the United States.

There is also a lot of concern about competition in health care. Competition is important. Competition always does two things: It drives down costs and increases quality. However, there is also a lot of cooperation in medical care today. Here, I observed physicians at one hospital helping physicians at another local hospital to increase the availability, the competition, for innovative medical treatments that benefit patients with improved outcome and less time in the hospital.

I am 83 years old. I have seen in my own career and life and that of my family that innovation in modern medicine, American style, moves at an astonishing speed. It is this innovation that has so improved the quality of our lives as well as extending the lifespans of Americans.

By far, the most enlightening and informative exercise was three nights of teletownhalls that I held during the break. On two nights, Dr. John Vitarello joined me as a guest for these townhall meetings. Over 180,000 telephone calls were placed; almost 20,000 people were home and listened to some part of the townhall.

Madam Speaker, I believe that the prescription for health care reform in the present bill will make it worse and more expensive. These changes are the opposite of what we need and Americans want.

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